Bert Agan (top left) is pictured in his early 20s, when he wrote this essay about his father, A.C. Agan, shown in photos on the right. A.C. was 54 when he died suddenly in 1939 from complications after appendix surgery.

Bert Agan (top left) is pictured in his early 20s, when he wrote this essay about his father, A.C. Agan, shown in photos on the right. A.C. was 54 when he died suddenly in 1939 from complications after appendix surgery.

During the Depression years, my grandfather, A.C., traveled from his Corpus Christi home selling newsprint rolls to small-town newspapers throughout south and central Texas. He died from complications after appendix surgery. My own father, Bert, died at a young age, at 56, and also from surgery complications. I found this essay when I was going through my dad's personal effects. I am glad that he knew that I loved him and that I appreciated his generous contributions to my life.

It was a cold rainy Friday of a Texas December. The car was splashing over the highway.

I looked out the window to fortify my thoughts with billboards. But my eyes were too blurry to read.

I tried to talk to my brother, but my throat was too tight to speak. The only words that held any meaning for me were those of the message I had received a few hours before, "Daddy died this morning."

For the first time in my life, my father became a person, an individual, part of me. I recalled the years of my childhood, my growing up days, my mistake moments, when I should have been with him. Sadly, I remembered the heedlessness of those years. And I wished I had told my father how much I loved him.

My father was a man of high integrity, a gentle man, a gentleman, a man's man. He had always worked hard to make life pleasant for his family, traveling as a salesman through Texas weather, year after year. The majority of his adult life was spent in small, uncomfortable hotels. I remember that when he was home, my brother, my sister and I never found time to be with him. Our own pleasures consumed every moment. I loved my father, but with a knife-like pain, I realized that never in my life had I actually told him so.

I loosened my tight throat, as I entered the dear, familiar home. I cried on Mother's shoulder, as I had done in childhood. I tiptoed into my father's room, eager to say the words too long left unspoken.

The bed was empty. They had taken him away. I sat on the bed, felt his favorite blanket, then, I closed his traveling bag. "Daddy died this morning." How I wish I had told my father how much I loved him.

After the ordeal of the funeral, the talk of going through his traveling bag and his pockets was delegated to me in search of any unpaid bills, any unfinished business. Unfinished business!

The words were gall and worn.

With aching heart, I examined his billfold. It held a few dollars, some insurance receipts, pictures of his family and a letter - a letter that wracked me with grief. It was from a young Mexican boy who was in an orphanage that my father visited frequently. It was dated three years previously. I reckoned that Manuel would have been about nine at the time. It was written on notebook paper. It was worn and limp from much unfolding and folding, so I knew that it had been read and reread many times.

My tears blotted the childish scrawl. He was thanking my father for a dollar that he had sent him.

"I hope you can come see us soon," he said, "you are a wonderful man, and I love you."

For three years, my father had carried that letter. I could picture him in a drab hotel reading the tender words. Perhaps it was storming outside. Perhaps the sun was scorching the tender young cotton. He was alone, gathering comfort from an orphan child, the comfort his own son had so heedlessly withheld.

I wish I had told my father how much I loved him. But now it is too late, at least for me. How about you?